By Julie Breathnach-Banwait
Previously published in The Fortnightly Review by Professor Cassandra Atherton
Cogaí
Ó bharr mo bhéil a bhascann rainn i dteanga atá ag útamáil is ag putráil, ag súisteáil mar a bheadh bean óltach, ag slapar is ag flapáil mar a bheadh ceathrú ite le meath, briosc, caite, aosta is púdrach. Is blas uirthi mar a bheadh tairní meirgeach is boladh an deataigh fhuair. Is déanann sí scimeáil trasna mo chraicinn, mar a dhéanfadh scuab sreinge, ag fágáil cosáin fola is balscóidí ina diaidh, mapaí d’aibhneacha is de thalamh fágtha trasna mo bhoilg. Éistear liom ach ní chloistear mé. Feictear mé ach táim dofheicthe. Ó mo phutóga is ar mo ghlúine, fím focail shíoda do threibheanna i bhfad i gcéin, do sheomrai folamha, d’eisteoirí gan suim, dóibh siúd atá traochta is tuirseach, caite le cath searbh mo theanga.
Tógtha as hiopnagóige/hypnagogia, Pierian Springs Press, 2026
Wars
From the tip of my mouth slip songs in a tongue that clumsily and awkwardly stumbles and trips, flailing like a drunken woman, gyrating and flapping unconnected like an arthritic hip, brittle, worn, powdering and aged. Tasting of rusted nails and smelling of cold smoke. She skims over my skin, like a wire brush, excreting in her wake trails of bloodied blemishes and blotches, maps of scraped rivers and terrains on my belly. I am listened to but unheard. I am seen but invisible. From my gut and on my knees, I weave silken words to faraway tribes, to empty rooms, to listeners indifferent, to apathetic audiences, the tuned-out and weary, worn from the bitter war of my tongue.
Taken from hiopnagóige/hypnagogia, Pierian Springs Press, 2026
To write and speak the Irish language in the vast ocean that is the English language world is akin to living a parallel existence, never quite touching the ground you walk on. One’s native language sizzles inside, like lit embers from the hearth of home, keeping one stoked and connected to oneself, wrapped in the last scrap of a childhood blanket, willing it won’t sink into the vast vortex of the English-speaking world surrounding it. One wanders through, with the pooka-like existence of a disconnected immigrant, dipping in and out of your childhood world to converse with the phantoms that live there, skimming through dictionaries and thesauruses, hunting for words that bring that familiar world back to colour, perusing through journals and books that sketch a place and a thinking, that doesn’t describe where you currently stand or what you currently see. What fun one might say. And it is. For the most part.
Connecting to oneself through your first language, after many years succumbing to a language that cannot describe your very pulse, is actually quite liberating. It’s nurturing another way of thinking, other constructs, other cognitive frameworks within which understanding can take place. And yet, even within these alternative ways of thinking, where one can both lose and find oneself, I found myself confronted with a familiar demand that writers who choose to write in their first language, a language that isn’t English, and that is to translate. Now how would I do this? Aghast, I initially repelled at the thought of partaking in such a barbaric act of slaughter.
In translating, many translators may agree that the true scourge of the craft is how maddeningly fiddly it is to carry a poem’s very essence from one language into another. Turning wine into water springs to mind. Upon reflection, I realised I was quite a proficient accidental translator, I had, after all, done it all my life. Living in Ireland – a predominantly English-speaking country – as an Irish speaker, one tends to hone those skills as an unconscious necessity, oscillating from one to the other depending on one’s location and context, flipping conversations and narratives as the need arises. But translating poetry, with all its complexities and nuances, is a tad thornier by its very nature. What kind of angle would one even take? Irish is a language shaped by soft rain, squelching bog, stone, the blue-black Atlantic, mythology and folklore, and translating means trying to coax it into a suit that’s too tight. As a lover of the environment, the Australian landscape has without doubt shaped my poetry, its red deserts, the scrawny gum trees, the mysterious bush. It is ancient, indifferent, flooded with creatures and plants that have no names in my people’s tongue. How does one explain a banksia, the blood-red sands, the scrawny gum trees, the throaty skit of the kookaburra, the wispiness of the kangaroo paw, cloudless skies, the persistent screaming sun? Thus, when translating from Irish to English, one begins to weave new cloth from old thread, hoping it won’t tear and hoping that the end result still bears a scrap of similarity to the original in mood, tone, shape, form, meaning, cadence. Bartering and balancing, one tries to make a fair swap, and as Kipling said it seems ‘ne’er the twain shall meet.’
The above prose poem ‘Cogaí/Wars,’ describes the conflict one may feel when they are working with a language heard by few. As a native speaker who cares deeply, there is a sense of urgency that comes with preserving a language, an accidental responsibility bestowed upon someone who is privileged to speak it fluently, to maintain, protect and nurture. One holds it like a delicate family heirloom. It is dragged reluctantly into politics and opinion, yet we shield and shelter, with the ordinary courage of daily use through speaking or writing or other forms of engagement. Reminding one that their culture may no longer exist in fifty years or so makes one’s body feel like it’s powdering and evaporating. One writes with fervour and intent, to prevent annihilation. And one translates in order to ensure access for those who may wish to prevent this too.
With only three of us writing in Irish on this side of the world, that we know of, the work carries a strange mixture of solitude, solidarity and peace. A reminder of who we are. The distance from Ireland inevitably shapes the way we write, sharpening certain instincts, dulling others. The absence of a local audience pushes us inward. You send your words towards the northern hemisphere, only to watch them sometimes slip into the Atlantic fog, waiting on readers who forget that you’re keeping the flame alive in a place where no one hands you turf for the fire. Still, you write with grit, with passion, with the knowledge that its future stretches far beyond the island that birthed it. For myself, as well as to preserve the language, I write to fortify, to remain relatively intact, lest I get chewed up by the English-speaking world. I translate to help others understand the Irish-speaking culture. Because writing Irish in an English‑speaking country is an act of fierce, stubborn love and loyalty, a statement of non-compliance, a refusal to shift fully, a defiance. An act of cultural continuity. It’s a refusal to let the ember die. It’s planting it in the red earth and willing it to grow its own wild form — twisted, wind‑bent, but alive. It’s speaking into the void and believing that somewhere, somehow, the echo will find its way home.
Julie Breathnach-Banwait
February 2026
